A Good Idea at the Time?

29 April 2011

Normandy House

10 days away in France and I didn't even see a cloud! The trip started fiery hot when Graeme persuaded me to try some chili sauce, Dragons blood or something. Extreme, and that was just a trace of a taste, luckily the dangerous Naga chemicals were forgotten back in the car and didn't have to be explained to any customs officials looking for chemical weapons. Waking up the morning after the drive south it felt good to be back in springtime Font and I was sort of keen to try some problems, when I did find a suitably easy problem to attempt it was, as I expected, hard work. Several months away from climbing was bound to lead to a drop in performance so to try and get back to climbing at somewhere near my previous level I left Font and headed to the Normandy coast.

While I was away Pete and Graeme set about some good problems and projects, Graeme getting fingers that are more used to plastic a bit thrashed on his projects while Pete went for mileage on his 7a quest. When I returned everyone was happy with the problems they had climbed but I'm sure their wafer thin skin was deeply happy that the chili sauce never made it over the channel.

My west coast training consisted of large streak barbecue's, beer, sitting around and, although I'm usually not a fan of sea food, very tasty scallops. It was cool to see my family and afterwards, luckily, there was enough time to get back to Font and give my fingers some exercise. The weekend I arived back in Font was a bank holiday and lots of UK boulderers had descended on Isatis, Sabot, Cuvier etc, car parks were full with GB, D, B and E plated vehicles but few French! Lots of chalk had been slapped over the usual problems and not brushed off, I hope this level of use is sustainable. Luckily we could still find some quieter problems to try and I enjoyed hauling myself up a 6c.

(for hi-res slideshow click above and view @ Flickr)

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2 April 2011

Ansteys Cove

Ansteys Cove in the sun, fantastic! Andre, Dan and I headed to the coast for a quick Sunday/Monday blast, them climbing, me snapping away........

Andre quickly ticked Cider Soak (8a, 3rd rp over two days) he also red pointed Just Revenge 7c+ and "flashed" Empire of the Sun 7b with a tiny amount of beta (not forgetting the interesting looking 7b slab event).

Dan got his project route Just Revenge.

On Sunday a couple of other teams were providing me with some entertainment.....
The Dawson brothers (12 and 14yrs) warmed up on Empire then worked their projects: Cider Soak and Fishermans Tale (8b). Not bad!
Tim and Grant were going well, as were the Castle team.

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21 March 2011

Brands Hatch

Well this is different.

It was a steep learning curve trying to pick Matt out from the other riders with enough time to be able to get him in the centre of my cameras view finder then keep him there while Canon works its magic. The grindingly slow autofocus of my 100 quid lens (mainly brought for it's macro ability!) didn't really help but just as the shadows extended across the track I had some shots that looked ok on the camera.

Unfortunately, fortunately? I have never ridden a bike so I'm not sure what subtle details to try and capture on film and maybe something that I've photographed because it appeals to me will not look good to a rider? sorry! I do know that getting your knee down is a good thing...........

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7 March 2011

More last shots

23 February 2011

A last couple of shots

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19 February 2011

No fondue

After the initial flip upside down he kept falling.

W.t.f.? Am I actually holding the ropes? I remember trying to take in slack to stop his headfirst fall - unsuccessfully.

Miraculously when Ramon did eventually stop, upside down, on a sloping snow covered ledge he was completely unharmed. Apart from not moving. As he lay there with his eyes open I enquired after his health? No response. This wasn’t quite the finish I had imagined for the second pitch of our new route.

The 55m first pitch had kept me amused for a couple of hours, a turfy un-protected start followed by some slightly loose sections with ok ledges to stand on and dig protection from the frozen mud clogged cracks. After that our chosen line steepened in to a long curving flake crack that Ramon traversed to the base of then disappeared up and out of view for hours, and I mean hours! When I eventually saw him again I was surprised that he was without his right crampon (it had been removed for an inventive smearing move) but I was even more surprised when he tried to put it back on in the middle of some fairly technical climbing. After the crampon was hung back on his harness and some awkward looking upwards moves were completed the ledge on top of the flake beckoned. I have a sharp memory of three solid looking swings of the left axe in to what must have been turf followed by that move all winter climbers know, when a downward pull on a hold starts to receive an outwards component as height is gained. I was closely watching this sketchy climbing and saw immediately when the left tool ripped. I also saw when Ramon was quickly flipped upside down by the rope. I heard the semi instinctive warning shout to the belayer change tone as the fall continued.

“Sit up Ramon, sit up Ramon”

Part of the gear ripping fall of about 15m had been hidden from my view but I had watched as Ramon had hit a snowy slab head first and not done much since. After lowering him a couple of meters back to the narrow ledge level with the belay I was encouraging him to sit up - without success.

“sit up Ramon” I shouted again.

Tie off ropes (easily done as they were not very tight).

“Sit up Ramon”

Escape system.

“Sit up Ramon”

Belay myself across ledge.

“Sit up Ramon”

“I’m trying”

OK, good I thought, a coherent reply, not one hundred percent perfect but at least it was an improvement from laying upside down looking at the sky. By the time I had traversed 10m right to Ramon he had put his crampon on and was looking at the big slice in his finger.

“What happened?” he asked.

“Your top tool ripped out of the turf. What hurts?”

“My finger. I don’t remember anything”

“We have to get back across to the belay” I said.

“Is that my blood?”

“Err? yea, from your finger”

“Where are we? I don’t remember anything”

here we go………..

One hour later the Swiss doctor advised a light dinner and specifically no fondue!

Three hours later and guess what Scott and Nic had prepared for dinner.

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16 February 2011

M12

Virtually no low level snow has made a couple of trips up to the Breitwangflu easier than normal partly because no skis are needed and partly because it is possible to drive up some of the forest track. Of course there are the obligatory little driving moments such as sliding backwards then sideways down a hairpin bend, always good to get the heart started at 6 am on a dark morning - at least the corner was one of the few that wasn’t edged with a precipice. Compared to the approach the climbing has been fairly non-eventful which is good and bad, good as we have avoided any epics and bad as the top of the Breitwangflu has remained elusive. One trip up there to attempt one of the best lines I have ever seen (Flying Circus) left me relieved that I wouldn’t have to try and Jumar any ice pierced horizontalness. A couple of days later we tried Alpha Saule, a route that is shown as an ice line in the guide, however we had seen that the crux pillar was missing and an alternative mixed line looked possible. With virtually no information about the route, apart from advice from a friend to take pegs and encouragement from another to do the line completely clean, we started climbing. After we had slowly, too slowly, finished three deceptively long approach pitches of smooth brittle ice Ramon set about the crux mixed pitch steadily hooking and crimping his was on to an ice rib. Seconding this superb little pitch of good rock holds, interesting moves, heavily featured ice (with stiff elbows) was fun for me, it would have been better to lead of course but not that day. As it turns out this obvious line has seen a bit of traffic and remained largely free of fixed gear, one old bolt on the belay ledge and some good wires relatively close to the ground protect the start of the pitch, more good wires and one conveniently placed peg entice a leader on to the ice. Then? sprint up the steep ice rib to a ledge or hang around and place a [probably] ok screw, the choice is yours. After this? the second half of the route remains - three pitches of ice, I had looked at the vertical ice festooned with brackets and chandeliers, running with water and unhappily given up. Ramon gamely took a look round the corner and cleverly decided on the less featured ice of an alternative line. After the snow had been falling for a while I started to loose my unconcerned attitude to driving back down the forest track in the dark, after the freezing water had run down to Ramon’s armpits his resolve wavered. At this point on the route, with the technical crux finished (by Ramon), team motivation slipped out of reach. Not something that would have happened previously.

Making an escape from the snow

How to escape from the snow

The real action has been going off at Uschinen over the last few days – Ramon did Pink Panther. Kristoffer Szilas has been working his way through the routes on the Pink Panther roof all around the grade of M10+-#! (check his Blog for details - link on left). Kris has been putting in the hours training with Malcolm Kent at Malc’s wall in Cobenhavn, lucky for them to have such a good facility to train at and credit to Malc for building it. Alex (http://www.alexandrebuisse.org/) has been recording events and I even got some shots I like when M12 was ticked by a British climber for the first time in years.

Alex

Kris and Jim

Kris on the sucessful red point of Power Bat

I first met Tom and his dad Jim at Kiental where their van immediately caught my attention for several reasons: 1, it was British (unique at Kiental I think) and 2, it looked like they were camping in it, and Kiental gets very cold at night! So as it turns out they are camping in the alps for the winter while Tom pulls the place down. Later while walking up to Uschinen I saw a tent (also unique for me) and guess who was camping there? After a couple of weeks Tom has now climbed most of the routes at Uschinen and added a couple of new lines and link-ups.